


Return to Innsmouth

by shouldgowork



Category: Dagon (2001), LOVECRAFT H. P. - Works, The Shadow over Innsmouth - H.P Lovecraft
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 12:03:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11668755
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shouldgowork/pseuds/shouldgowork
Summary: ‘Do you see what I mean, doctor?’An incredulous murmur, not so much to me as about me, was all the response I merited. I sat, fidgeting awkwardly, trying to look anywhere but straight ahead into the eyes of the man was looking back and forth, with intense suspicion, between my face and the photograph I had brought along with me.‘So you’re saying this picture was taken less than a year ago?’I nodded glumly.





	Return to Innsmouth

‘Do you see what I mean, doctor?’

An incredulous murmur, not so much to me as about me, was all the response I merited. I sat, fidgeting awkwardly, trying to look anywhere but straight ahead into the eyes of the man who was looking back and forth, with intense suspicion, between my face and the photograph I had brought along with me.

‘So you’re saying this picture was taken less than a year ago?’

I nodded glumly and began to explain the situation further; I’d been to enough doctors to know what questions to head off.

‘I haven’t had any plastic surgery, not so much as a single filler injection, I’m not going through early menopause, I haven’t got any food allergies, and my lifestyle hasn’t changed much. And I _don’t_ have an iron deficiency.’

He continued to play spot the difference as if I had not spoken, finally staring straight into my eyes. My pale, oddly enlarged eyes. Sitting above my pale, inflated cheeks.

‘I think a hormone imbalance could be behind this.’ He said, his gaze lingering on my forehead.

I sighed; I’d heard this line before; he clearly had no more idea of what was going on than the others had.

‘And you say there are _no_ changes to your lifestyle?’

‘Well, I’ve recently become a pescatarian for ethical reasons, but I don’t think cutting out meat could do this. And anyway, I only did that a month or so ago and this has been going on a lot longer.’ He nodded and went back to examining the photos.

‘And there’s no history of this’, he continued, gesturing vaguely at my face, ‘in the family?’

‘Well, it’s hard to say. Not on my dad’s side for sure, but my parents used an egg donor.’

‘In America.’ He added, looking back over my notes. I nodded glumly; there was no chance of tracing a donor from this side of the Atlantic.

‘This is unusual.’ He half-whispered as he turned my face from side to side, as if appraising an animal in a show. I noticed him flinch slightly as his hand made contact, but was already well aware that my skin had started to turn cold. ‘ _Most_ unusual.’ He continued.

It had started a few months ago. A peculiar change, at that time vague and indefinable, far too early in life to be routine, especially in someone as health-conscious as me. I hadn’t noticed it until my foundation colour stopped matching my face, god knows when it had begun, but I suspect only a little while before as, since then, the changes have been drastic. An odd, if painless, bulging of the eyes, and a softening of my jawline and cheekbones. All fairly superficial, not that that wasn’t a problem itself, but, as my closest friends never tired of pointing out, who knows what condition could have been causing it? I was no closer to finding out but was fairly sure I wouldn’t find out from the endocrinologist the doctor referred me to.

I waited for my appointment in a few weeks, waited and tried to get on with life. Everything was somehow different. It wasn’t just my face that had changed, I had an indefinable but unshakeable feeling that I didn’t belong, that the friends I had loved for years were becoming strangers before my very eyes, that my parents, god rest their souls, were somehow growing distant from my memory. Even my job as a social worker seemed ultimately pointless. I knew that this sort of depression was not surprising in the circumstances and tried to press it down, but the feeling was always there, gnawing at me. And always the slight physical discomfort, the sensation of my skin stretching, constant neck ache, a very slight pressure in my chest.

And so it was, with this feeling even stronger than before, I found my best friend knocking on the door of my flat around a week after this latest doctor’s visit.

‘You didn’t answer the buzzer, but your neighbour let me in.’ She said, gently pushing past me into the room.

I didn’t bother lying about having heard it, there was never any point in either one of us lying to the other.  Instead I grabbed her, beginning to sob as she wound her arms around me shoulders. I sat on my sofa in much the same state, as she made a strong cup of black tea with honey and brought it over with the teddy bear only we now remembered from childhood.

‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ I said gratefully as I let the warmth of the mug seep into my chilled fingers, feeling a spark of hopefulness that had been entirely absent for months now.

‘Honestly, it’s not that bad. It’s _different_ , but it’s not as terrible as you seem to think.’ She said, almost convincingly, but I merely shook my head.

‘I’m scared. I don’t know why this is happening.’

‘I’ll always be here munchkin, but it might be easier on me if you brushed your teeth after eating herrings.’ She teased.

Ice dripped down my spine.

‘I haven’t eaten anything at all today. _And_ I brushed my teeth this morning.’

She laughed. ‘Never mind then.’ She said, turning back to her magazine looking for something worth reading out. But I _did_ mind. I went and brushed my teeth again until my gums bled.

‘How about now?’ I asked, wafting my breath in her direction again. Her nose wrinkled and my heart dropped into my stomach.

‘Not great to be honest, Caro. Still pretty fishy.’

‘Smell me.’

She laughed at what she assumed to be a joke until she saw the look on my face. Instead she nodded briskly and business-like; after all, living our teenage years in each other’s pockets had resulted in far stranger requests. She took my wrist and sniffed the skin gently, moving her nose up to my elbow, stopping there.

‘I think something might have died in your water tank?’ She said quietly. Hopefully. I shook my head, unwilling to say what we both knew; it was me. That reek, which I could now also smell, was me. I rushed over to the mirror, staring again at my bulging, fleshy features, watching my fetid breath condense on the glass, and I finally had a label for the changes happening to me 

I had become amphibian.

This was completely insane. I knew as much, but after a bottle of wine and with the restraining influence of Lynne gone, I found myself googling ‘turning into a fish’ despite myself. Endless hits of joke posts and Little Mermaid fanfiction, a search as fruitless as could be expected – until one several pages down caught my eye. A blog post. The title, ‘My Face’. I clicked on it, hoping to find yet another childish prank.

_‘I’m sorry if this doesn’t really belong here, but I’m scared. My face is… going wrong. There’s no other way to put it tbh. It’s puffing out, distorting, and weirdest of all, first of all my cat wouldn’t stop nipping my fingers, but now she runs away from me. I’m so pale now. Really cold to the touch too. I have no family, I’ve kept myself to myself after I came out of foster care, and that was a long time ago now. I’ve got no one to ask about this, no one to turn to. The worst thing is that the skin on my neck is starting to blister and split. Please help me.’_

The difference from my circumstances were trivial; the similarities nothing short of terrifying. There was only one reply.

_‘Hey, I’m so sorry you’re going through this. I think you need a psychiatrist. My aunt had a similar obsession when she hit middle age – she wouldn’t get help and it cost her her life. You say you have no friends but I bet there are people who care about you. Don’t let them find you the way my cousins found her. I see you’re from Essex County too – PM me if you need any suggestions for people to see.’_

A chill ran down my spine but – no. This was not going on in mind. If it were, how could Lynne smell me? How could this poor man’s cat want to eat him? Not that this was much comfort. There was something else about the post too that bothered me but at the time I could not quite put my finger on it. I clicked hopefully on the original poster’s profile – nothing more recent than three years ago. I could only hope they had grown bored of blogging. Whatever obscure syndrome I was coming down with, maybe in the years since this post the other commenter had kept looking into it. I navigated onto their profile, going through dribs and drabs of a life spent as a doting father and slightly more unwilling office drone. Until 18 months ago. One final post.

_‘It’s happening to me too. God help me.’_

I shut the laptop and opened another bottle.  

I woke up when it was still dark, due to the unusually bad hangover the previous evening had earned me. This itself was nothing to celebrate but the sobriety meant that I instantly realised what had bothered me the previous night; Essex County. A quick search confirmed my suspicions. Essex County was right on the doorstep of Boston.

My parents had met at as students at MIT in the late 60s and hadn’t moved far in the first 10 years of their marriage, as my father had stayed on there as a junior researcher before moving to Tufts as a lecturer. They had tried for many years to keep up with their friends and cousins by expanding the family but with no success. It wasn’t until the 80s, with the miracle of egg donation, that something could be done, and was done, at a clinic in Boston itself.

It was more than possible that the egg donor had been a resident of Essex County. It was equally possible that both of these individuals and I were distant relatives suffering from the same condition, or with the same genetic defect. What was certain was that I wasn’t going to find any answers in London.

This one strand, one outlying hope, had done wonders. In the days before my flight to Boston left I had found the courage to go resume parts of my life, if not the whole of it. I was going out in the cool, damp autumn evenings, though not the days, and I was seeing Lynne, if no one else. As we sat in my living room the night before I was due to leave, I felt such genuine hope, if not actual certainty, that I would have an answer within a few days.

The next day brought even greater cause for happiness; not a second glance from anyone to or at the airport, and the realisation that, while I had clearly changed in my appearance, it was not actually odd to anyone who didn’t know me from before. Perhaps, even if I didn’t get answers, these changes wouldn’t be the end of the world. Perhaps those posters I’d found were exaggerating. The pressure in my chest and neck had all but gone in the last few days – was it possible I had only felt it because of their words? Surely it was. With these thoughts I fell into a deep, dreamless, and welcome sleep the whole way across the ocean. Better rested than I had been in months, I made my way to the taxi rank to find someone to take me to my hotel. The line was long but I didn’t mind, sitting in top of my case breathing in the refreshing air, so different from London’s, and enjoying the crisp afternoon air. I was almost sad when I had finally shuffled my way to the front, and even more unhappy when I saw the tiny, wizened man in the driving seat of my cab. I steeled myself with the thought of my travel insurance and smiled at him. He popped the trunk without looking my way and unlocked the doors.

I shut in my case and slid into the back seat.

‘Where to.’ He said, glancing at me in his mirror, his eyes darting back for a more lingering look. ‘Innsmouth, I’m guessing.’ He muttered, almost under his breath.

I shook my head, ignoring what must have been, from his tone, an insult, and thrust a piece of paper with the address into the front of the cab. He said nothing for most of the drive, staring at me in the mirror more often than he looked at the road, as I tried to avoid his eyes by staring pointedly ahead. He practically threw the change at me and sped off once we’d arrived at the hotel, some way on the outskirts of the city in the direction of Essex County. By now it was quite late, and I picked my way carefully up the drive to the door through the evening gloom. In the dim light of an old-fashioned lamp, a scruffy young man perfunctorily greeted me and gave me the key to a room, far cozier than the welcome I had received, at the top of the building with a view of the clear night sky, which I enjoyed for barely a minute before I fell again into a deep sleep.

When I woke up the bright sun and bustle outside told me I must have slept a very long time, odd considering I had spent the entire flight passed out too, but I supposed that it must have been the release of tension after weeks and months of stress that were making me do this. Even so, I thought, as I heard a clock somewhere in the hotel strike 1pm, 15 hours did seem a bit much. I got up and dressed quickly, heading downstairs to ask the woman on the desk a few questions about the local buses.

The same man from the previous night was back on shift, reading a comic so intently I had to rap on the table in front of him. He jumped slightly and shoved it out of sight, listening to my rambling questions about the area and leafing through timetables.

‘You been away long? Your accent is almost gone.’ He said as he searched.

‘I’ve never been here before.’

‘But you’re _from_ round here.’ He said, not a question.

‘What makes you say that?’ I asked uneasily.

‘Why else would you be here? No one _comes_ here, they just come home.’ He said with a chuckle I didn’t quite feel able to share.

‘Ignore my brother, he’s just messing with you.’

I spun round and found myself face to face with a tall, square-jawed, woman, a visible paragon of efficiency and neatness, and found myself wondering again at how different siblings can turn out.

‘You’re lucky this is a family business, Mike, that’s all I’ll say.’ She said with a toothless severity he merely laughed off.

‘You must be our new arrival.’ She said, extending a very pale hand and enclosing it round mine with crushing force.

‘Yeah, just got in pretty late last night. I’m Caroline.’

‘Alexis. What brings out you here? I wouldn’t put it like Mike, but not many tourists stay this far out of the city itself, unless they’re here for Salem, and then they usually just stay there.’

My mouth quirked involuntarily into a frown, suddenly reminded of the unhappy reason for my visit, and cursed myself for not expecting at least a few questions during my stay. I doubted that claiming I possibly had a mysterious disease would make me a welcome guest, and opted for a total lie, hoping it hadn’t taken me a suspiciously long time to come up with it.

‘I had some overdue holiday and had always wanted to go to Boston, but I love nature and there are some beautiful parks out this way. Seemed like a good compromise.’

‘Well, we’re glad it did.’ She said. Mike grunted in acknowledgement and snuck his face back to his comic.

 ‘Or at least it did until I saw the bus time tables. The public transport back home in England is a lot better, but then I guess it has a lot less ground to cover.’ I said, babbling without seeming to be able to stop.

‘Yeah the buses aren’t great out here. But I wouldn’t mind giving you a lift some places, if it fell on my days off.’

‘That’s very kind of you.’ I replied, hoping the blush wasn’t visible on my newly developed pallor.

‘Well, just let me know.’ She said, turning back down the corridor and out of sight.

I spent the rest of the day holed up in my room, going over a map of the county obsessively, looking up odd medical cases in the local regions, or anything of the sort. I soon had to give up on the idea of tracing my actual egg donor as impossible; the only clinic in the county open early enough to be mine had burnt down in an accident not long after my parents moved, taking all records, and the unfortunate staff, with it. Nothing in any local online papers about any mysterious illness either. Nothing at all that could be helpful, aside from my realisation that much of the region was very swampy even today, and was therefore surely a likely hiding place for disease, though this would not by itself explain it showing up in me. A thorough sweep of the rest of the internet could wait for the next day, as the evening was growing dark and the smell of dinner had wafted its way up to the third floor.

The small dining room was hardly cramped, consisting of some quiet, scattered locals, a small cluster of people who eavesdropping told me were in the area for a cousin’s wedding the next evening, and an even smaller table containing Mike and a couple of equally surly friends. I took a seat by the window, unwilling to give up any opportunity to smell the sea air while I was here and breathing its sweet scent deeply.

‘Snuffling like that, you’ll give my dog a run for his money.’ An elderly man barked across the room at me humorously.

‘I can’t help enjoying the sea air, it’s so different from home, I don’t live on the coast.’ I said, laughing but a little flustered, as I realised I had indeed been sniffing away like some feral creature.

Mike scoffed. ‘Where do you think we are? We’re a good 15 miles from the sea here. If it smells salty you can blame Alex, she’s on cooking duty tonight.’

I looked back to the old man, whose smile had vanished and who was looking stonily at his table setting as if I weren’t there. I turned hastily back to the book I’d brought down with me, reading the same sentence over and over again until someone plonked themselves down in the seat opposite.

‘We used to get told off for chewing gum that loudly.’ Alexis said, passing a bowl of stew across the table.

‘Sorry, force of habit.’ I said, thinking unhappily of the endless supply of strong mints and gum I’d brought with me.

‘It’s ok I won’t tell. Probably.’

‘Such betrayal.’ I gasped in mock horror.

‘So, what brings you to Boston? Not the most obvious place for someone visiting from Europe.’

I was still very hesitant to bring up a family connection at all in the circumstances. ‘Oh, I’m not really sure. A friend of mine went last year and loved it, and I like old places and buildings so it seemed like a good place.’

‘Massachusetts is full of some beautiful old buildings if you know where to look.’

‘And I take it you do?’

‘There have to be some benefits to living out here.’ She said, suddenly sombre, looking, just for a moment, like a wild animal caught in a trap, eyes bright and angry.

‘What keeps you here?’ I asked, and she hesitated for just a moment, before plastering a smile on her face.

‘Duty.’ She said with mock-solemnity. With her useless brother, I could see how difficult that could be.

‘Is it just the two of you?’

‘Our parents are gone.’ She said in a gentle but firm tone that brooked no response. I changed the subject.

‘And where would you be if you weren’t so honourable?’

‘I’d travel properly. If I could. I’ve only left the state about four times, let alone the country.’

‘Britain is full of many beautiful places. If you take me round here, it’d only be fair to repay the favour.’

‘I’d like that.’ She replied brightly, though this was clearly no more than a pipe dream. I was intrigued by her apparent inability to leave the area but, with my own secrets, it didn’t seem fair to pry. We chatted fairly neutrally for the rest of the meal and made plans to go sightseeing in two days’ time.

The next morning, I took a bus into Salem to visit the witch museums, on the advice of the wedding party who had done so the day before. The first was hilariously awful, full of melodramatic re-enactments I continuously snuck photos of for Lynne. The second was a little better, though, once again, its tales of women persecuted for being different acted at times as an unwilling reminder of my real purpose here. I knew it was silly, even at the time, but I felt so at home here, so relaxed, that it made any bad thought unwelcome. I made my leisurely way to the Pirate Museum down the road, hoping for a similarly campy approach to take my mind off it. Two rooms of outrageously dressed mannequins later, my mood was almost restored.

Until, that is, I decided to take a closer look at the map of the area in the 18th century. A name stuck out to me, odd because unlike the other ports it didn’t show up on any modern map I had seen, and, I soon realised, because it was the name the taxi driver the other night had mentioned. There Innsmouth was, lying a short distance from Rewley, in the middle of the swamp. I had another trawl through the information panels on the walls and realised that in contrast to the other old towns in the region, Innsmouth had merited a single terse description as ‘An old fishing town, now derelict’. I asked the man on duty about it but he had only moved to the area himself a few years previously and said he’d never heard the town mentioned, nor noticed it on the map himself. With no one around to ask I made my way back to the bus stop to return to the hotel. After a quick and companionless dinner I went back up to my room to check in with Lynne, a far shorter message than I’d intended because, once again, sleep weighed heavily on me far too early. I kept the message to my non-findings about the area, resisting the strong urge to gush about the proprietor of the hotel, though under normal circumstances I would have been only too happy to do so, and she to listen. I had barely shut the lid of my laptop before I fell asleep, fully clothed, sprawled across the bed.

I woke up in the same position a few hours later, blinded not by the morning sun, as I thought at first, but by the harsh bulb. Turning the light off I rolled over on my side and looked out of the open window. It was the middle of the night and all but the main streets of the town were pitch black, the only noise a quietly roaring engine of a truck making deliveries for the next morning. There wasn’t even a breeze rustling the trees; once the truck was gone, there was not a sound, not a single movement. And yet – or perhaps, because – of this, I had the distinct feeling I was being watched. Not so much watched as watched over, as I didn’t feel in any way threatened. I made my way over to the window to look out closer but saw nothing out of place. In the distance, I could hear waves crashing on rocks and my heart began to race. I dived back under the covers, a sudden chill coming in from the night air, and stayed there until the sun rose, when I finally fell into a sleep once again.

I felt stupid the moment I woke up again. On a still night like last night it wasn’t impossible for sound to travel the distance from the bay to my window, it was also entirely possible that my nose _was_ more sensitive to the smell of the region, not being used to it as the locals were, and a change of scene was hardly a ground breaking cure for insomnia. With my pain also gone, my symptoms were dwindling to the pallor of my skin and the odd changes to my face. Not ideal, but certainly not the end of the world. It got me no closer to a diagnosis or even an educated guess, but at least I was coming back to being my normal self

It was still another day until I could claim a lift with Alexis, and though the thought of going in to Boston appealed, I knew what Lynne’s advice would be to get out and talk to people, a habit drummed into her by an anthropology degree and never lost thereafter, and one that had always provided us with entertaining stories from long coach trips.

I had noticed a diner down the street and made my way there; as I’d hoped it was half full even during mid-morning. I sat myself at the bar with a book and a coffee, and tried to chat with the cook when he wasn’t too busy.

‘I visited a few of the Salem museums yesterday’ I said casually. He rolled his eyes and laughed, shaking his head side to side with, surprisingly, no effect on the cuts he was making on his board. ‘I know it’s a bit silly, but I love horror stories.’

‘Well, there’s plenty of that around here. Lots of infamous people and places, strange happenings. Or so they say, it’s good for tourists anyway.’ He said, pointing out of the window to the shop opposite, its windows crammed with jack o lanterns.

I watched him a while, marvelling at the skill and speed with which he was working, as he cleaved his way expertly through the animal. I had come to a stop in spite of my earlier plans, they didn’t seem, all of a sudden, very wise. Something held me back, some part of my brain begged me to never say the name of the place aloud again, but curiosity won out in the end.

‘I couldn’t help but notice,’ I began, lean in a little further, ‘a name on the map in one of the museums I couldn’t find anywhere else. Innsmouth. Just seemed a bit mysterious.’

The smallest slip, one chop a few millimetres thicker than the others in the row, but it was confirmation enough to me that he knew something, that there _was_ something to know.

‘Oh yeah, sure. It, well, it was just a fishing town, though it wasn’t above a little smuggling or privateering. But it’s nearly abandoned now. There’s nothing to see there.’

A pristine New England town seemed the very opposite of nothing, especially to a tourist like myself, and I must have looked unconvinced as he pressed on. ‘It’s on private land now, not worth trespassing for anyway.’

‘Oh, well, never mind. Plenty else to do while I’m here.’

Convinced, he dropped that subject and we made small talk until my coffee was finished and I got up to leave, dissatisfied with the results of my fieldwork. I was nearly at the door when a hand shot out and grabbed my wrist gently. I turned back to my previous seat but the cook had his back turned, hunched over the steaming hob. I looked back to the hand and its owner, and found myself looking down at the unmistakable puffy and sallow face of a drinker. The raw smell of her breath as she opened her mouth to speak was unnecessary confirmation of my suspicion.

‘Thought I heard you mention Innsmouth.’ She said in a low voice. I nodded. ‘I can tell you a couple of stories, if you can spare a few dollars. My cat’s sick you see, and my nephew-‘

I slapped a note down on the table without waiting for the rest. She snatched it up with small, grubbing fingers and tucked it into her bra.

‘The people there were strange. Always strange.’ She began. ‘Something wrong with them, so many went missing, so many just went… wrong. Some of them sailed half way round the world, brought something back with them they shouldn’t. Finally came back to bite them in the 20s, I think, maybe a little later. It was before I was born, anyway. The government had to step in. They- well, hell.’ She said, losing her thread, ‘Like I says, I wasn’t born yet. Don’t know all the facts. Not that there’s much to know. Thanks anyway.’ With surprising speed she slipped out of her seat and out of the door, and shuffled speedily to the left. I watched her until the turning of my head allowed me to see a waving arm. I realised Alexis was outside and had spotted me and I returned the gesture, though by the time I had gathered up my bag and coat and stood up she had vanished, no doubt on some errand or another for the hotel, though I was too triumphant to be disappointed.

There was finally an explanation, or part of one. A disease, a tropical disease, unknown and unfamiliar at the time – although by now, surely treatable if diagnosed correctly – had been brought back to that small, isolated town and become endemic, until the state had no choice but to step in and do something not willingly remembered much or discussed in the area. It wasn’t surprising that a few families might have moved away to Rockport or Essex, or further afield, before that happened, or that the area wasn’t a popular destination. Though the nagging thought wouldn’t quite die down, if it had been this easy for me to find out all of this, why not those people who actually lived in the region? I thought of Lynne, and of what she would have said about outside perspectives, and felt a little better, until I also realised that whatever this problem was, it was clearly hereditary, and was therefore not quite as simple as some reverse version of smallpox. In any case, I wasn’t likely to find anything more out from here. Which left me with one option.

…

‘There you are, I was almost worried you’d forgotten or bailed.’ Alexis said, getting out from behind the welcome desk, shaking her head exaggeratedly.

‘Sorry’ I said, shambling down the stairs as I pulled a jumped over my head; once again I’d overslept. ‘Just lost track of time.’ She pouted jokingly and led the way out to her car.

‘So I had a few thoughts about where to go, I was thinking of this great place in the forest near here that Mike and I used to go to with our parents.’

It was tempting, almost terminally so, but this condition, whatever it was, couldn’t wait any longer. Not now I had an actual lead.

‘Forest would be great if you wouldn’t mind a little trip to the marshes first.’

She pulled a face. ‘Not sure if I have the right gear for wading.’

I laughed. ‘Don’t worry, I’ll give you a piggy back.’

‘Any reason in particular.’

‘I think this might be a bit naughty so I don’t expect you to come all the way, but I was hoping you could get me near to Innsmouth.’

To my surprise she merely snorted.

‘Whose tall tales have you been listening to then?’

I suddenly felt a little foolish.

‘Do you guys wheel it out for all the tourists?’

‘Only our favourite ones. But honestly, there’s nothing in them. It’s just as empty as people say it is, though some people still live there. Nothing sinister about it, it’s just sort of shitty there – hey, what’s the matter?’ She said, catching sight of the tears threatening to spill down my face.

‘You’re gonna think I’m silly.’ I said, my voice cracking a little, the disappointment I felt from yet another rug being swept from under me leaving a bitter taste in my mouth. ‘I’m from round here, actually, or at least my parents are. I’m trying to trace a family connection.’

She stared at me for a moment as if unable to move.

‘To Innsmouth?’ She said finally.

I nodded.

‘Why there in particular?’

‘No reason. It’s just-‘ I hesitated, unsure of if i really wanted to get into all of this with her. It was both personal and embarrassing and, no matter how well we got on, we didn’t really know each other at all. She made a noise of encouragement and I decided to continue. ‘I think- no, I _know_ that there’s something wrong with me. That something has happened. I can’t explain it, can’t really describe it either but I think it’s hereditary and I don’t know for sure because my parents used an egg donor and I just don’t know.’ I felt panic rising, staring to gasp for air.

A hand, warm and firm, settled on my shoulder, rubbing circles into it, and I felt instantly calmer.

‘Well then, let’s go.’

‘Really?’

She nodded resolutely, taking my hand and leading me gently to the car. ‘I’m sure it will help to see it at least, to set your mind at rest. Or who knows? Maybe you’ll find your answers there after all.’

We drove in silence, though I hardly noticed; I was more than a little distracted, my heart hammering in anticipation and fear. We wound our way towards the marshy coastline, leaving the tarmac and eventually even the well-defined dirt road behind until, almost from nowhere we were in a street of ramshackle and burnt out houses.

‘This it?’

She nodded, now herself looking strangely nervous. I opened the door and gasped as the sea air hit me properly, so heady and pleasant my eyes began to stream slightly. I looked around me properly after I’d wiped my face. Though the place was beyond run down, there were signs of habitation, some washing discreetly hanging by the side of one of the houses, recent tyre tracks on the road that we had not made, though there didn’t seem to be a soul around the place.  

‘Well?’ I heard her say behind me, her voice oddly shaky.

‘I feel like I’m home.’ I heard myself say dreamily.

‘I understand.’ She said, with a giddy little laugh that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up, as I realised – she _did_ understand. Her inability to leave the area, her prematurely ‘gone’ parents, her wish to help me – only one explanation made sense. That she was like me. Grinning from ear to ear, I spun round, and found myself staring down the barrel of a gun. My heart started to race and I found myself frozen to the spot.  

‘Alex?’

‘I had to be sure.’ She murmured, not quite meeting my eyes – though she seemed not so much to be avoiding my gaze as staring intently at something, and, as chills ran through my, I realised not only that her eyes were on my neck, but that my neck was strangely cool at the sides. I raised my shaking fingers to it, probing the slits that had torn themselves into my flesh, screaming and feeling my legs give way as I hit the ground. I heard her start to sob just as I did.

‘I’m so sorry Caroline.’ She said, and I whimpered as I heard the safety being taken off the gun, crying and cowering under my arms, as if they could protect me. Still the shot didn’t come, and instead she continued babbling wildly.

 ‘I wish – I wish I didn’t have to… but me, and my father, and _his_ father – did what had to be done. And I still do. Even now. And we _have_ to hunt. To keep people safe from those monsters. You get that, right? I _have_ to stop you from becoming like them. You don’t know what they did, what they are. What you’d be. If there were anything I could do to avoid this, I would. Anything at all. I’m so _sorry._ ’

I heard a shot and my heart skipped a beat. And then resumed beating. Tentatively I opened an eye and wiped it on my sleeve. I was unscathed, meanwhile, Alexis’ blood was soaking from her head into the sand.

‘Welcome, child.’ A voice said a little way off, a voice I refused to give a face to by looking up, by acknowledging in any way, though the faint smell of fish and the slick, oily noises of its movement told me more than I wished to know. Perhaps I should have thanked it for saving my life, but that would have meant engaging with the events of the past few minutes, giving them a legitimacy and reality in my mind that I thought would drive me mad right then and there. Still shaking, I reached into her jacket for the car keys and tried unsteadily to open the door.

‘You’ll return, when you’re ready. And we will welcome you again.’

I finally succeeded in getting in, and shut the door against the voice, speeding away from it. The welcome desk at the hotel was mercifully empty, and I tore my way up the stairs and through my room, packing as fast as I could, stopping only to put on a turtleneck and call a taxi to take me to the airport. It was only as my flight took off about two hours later that I felt myself properly exhale and unclench my fists, though my heart was still pounding, and I could feel the people in the seats either side of me shift as far as politely possible away from me, panting, wild-eyed, and sweating as I must have been.

Or perhaps by now I simply smelled overwhelmingly of fish, I thought, subtly pressing my fingers to my neck and finding it still altered. I drew my collar up as high as possible and shut my eyes, willing sleep to come. Soon, we’d land, three thousand miles away or more, far from awful memory and temptation. I would be safe in London. I would be.

…

Distance and time are nothing. I am still part of Innsmouth. I am still changing. I dream constantly of an apartment block where the flats are made of water. Each door opens into a little slice of the ocean floor, dark and cool and inviting. I wake up in the dry and suffocating air, and know I can’t go on for much longer. Soon, I will go home to be with my people. I can organise them. Find those others who ended up so far from home like I did. Find those stranded inland who don’t know what they are. Maybe my real mother knew what she was when she donated, maybe she didn’t. But we can use the same methods, and spread ourselves across the entire world, multiplying and multiplying until we are safe, and the humans learn to cower and hide in our place.


End file.
